PG&E Accelerating Home Electrification for Customers via SPAN Edge

New at-the-meter solution gives customers a lower-cost path to adopting EVs and electric appliances—without the delays and expense of traditional panel upgrades

OAKLAND, Calif., Feb. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) today announced a strategic collaboration with SPAN to deploy the company's SPAN Edge solution to help customers electrify their homes more affordably and efficiently.

SPAN Edge is an at-the-meter device that enables real-time load management and allows homes to add new electric appliances or electric vehicle charging without costly electric panel or service upgrades—addressing one of the most significant barriers to residential electrification.

PG&E will deploy the new SPAN Edge devices coupled with next-generation metering infrastructure through its new PanelBoost program, a grid-edge innovation initiative designed to reduce upgrade costs for customers adopting electric vehicles, heat pumps, induction cooking, and other high efficiency electric technologies.

PG&E estimates that more than 600,000 homes in PG&E's service area are likely to require some type of electric service upgrade in the next decade to meet electrification demand.

"PG&E is committed to helping our customers electrify affordably while maintaining a reliable, resilient grid," said Mike Delaney, Vice President of Strategy & Innovation, PG&E. "Our work with SPAN aims to enable thousands of households to add electric appliances and EVs faster and without more costly panel and electric system upgrades."

PG&E joins a growing list of energy companies and grid partners, including Landis+Gyr, utilizing SPAN Edge to enable affordable customer electrification, manage distribution system upgrades and support the clean energy transition.

"Our partnership with PG&E is a critical step in making home electrification affordable and accessible," said Arch Rao, CEO of SPAN. "By deploying SPAN Edge at scale, we are helping PG&E customers bypass the traditional 'panel bottleneck' and accelerate the transition to clean energy."

A Scalable Solution for California's Load Growth
SPAN Edge uses a Dynamic Service Rating™ capability to shape home energy demand during peak events, helping protect local electric transformers and maintain grid reliability. This technology complements PG&E's broader grid edge, R&D, and innovation strategy to develop and deploy scalable smart-panel and meter-socket-based solutions to avoid expensive service upgrades for customers.

Electricians and installers participating in early PanelBoost feedback sessions praised the program for helping customers avoid electric panel service upgrades.

"PG&E just made it possible to effectively have a 200-amp panel by throttling the loads in their house," one installer noted. Customer testers echoed this sentiment, with several indicating they would have used this pathway before pursuing traditional upgrade work.

Building on the Success of PG&E's SAVE Program
SPAN Edge deployments will build on lessons learned from PG&E's successful Seasonal Aggregation of Versatile Energy (SAVE) virtual power plant program, which demonstrated the value of aggregating residential distributed energy resources to mitigate local grid constraints.

SPAN's existing customer-sited infrastructure and Dynamic Service Rating™ provided PG&E with valuable load-shaping capability and analytics—and future VPPs can further scale these benefits through at-the-meter technologies like SPAN Edge.

With California's energy demand expected to grow meaningfully due to transportation and building electrification, PanelBoost is designed to align with California Energy Commission forecasts and enable cost-effective customer transitions.

The program is a part of PG&E's broader innovation implementation strategy that incorporates extensive customer research, market analysis, and lessons learned from previous technology demonstrations.

Meaningful Economic and Grid Benefits
SPAN Edge devices are installed quickly at the electric meter. They offer utilities a reliable, flexible load-shaping tool and give customers a lower-cost path to electrification—avoiding service upgrades that can cost $6,000 to $40,000 and take months to complete. In comparison, the cost estimate for a customer to have an electrician to install a SPAN Edge device through PanelBoost could be between $500-$2,000 dependent on a range of factors.

Through PanelBoost, PG&E will supply the SPAN Edge device for customers as an add on to their electric meter, and customers will be responsible for the costs for an electrician to install the device and for costs to wire any new appliances and loads connecting to the device.

PG&E plans to launch a website with more information about the SPAN Edge PanelBoost offering in summer 2026.

PG&E plans to initially scale SPAN Edge devices to thousands of customers when the program kicks off later this summer, with further scale as the program develops over the next several years.

To learn more about PG&E's electrification programs and customer offerings, visit www.pge.com/electrification

About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE: PCG), is a combined natural gas and electric utility serving more than sixteen million people across 70,000 square miles in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit pge.com, pge.com/news and pge.com/innovation.

About SPAN
SPAN is on a mission to enable electrification for all and provide energy management for every home. The company designs products that remove barriers to electrification, providing a holistic approach to managing increasing demands on household energy. Powering your home with clean energy should be a simple and delightful experience that is technology-forward and human-centered. For more information, go to www.span.io.

SOURCE Pacific Gas and Electric Company